Acute pain management in the pediatric ambulatory setting: How do we optimize the child's postoperative experience?

The authors, in their prospective study, explored the impact of various demographic, intra-operative, and parental factors on both pain and behavior-related outcomes in young children undergoing outpatient surgical procedures. In recent years, we have seen a surge in efforts to streamline postoperative care in ambulatory surgical patients; the authors' data contribute to this mission and pave the road to developing novel strategies to improve postoperative pain management in this setting. [4] The authors noted an increased level of pain in children whose parents were compliant with discharge pain medication administration instructions when compared to children who were not prescribed any pain medications.